The first day of November. Torrid heat. We continue to wear light clothing, short sleeve shirts, shorts, strapless dresses. Just like summer. And in the open-air restaurants, diners shoo away the swarms of annoying flies that land on their noses, ears and hands, or even on the chopitos and patatas bravas. No, it is not normal, it is something as unusual for this season as the almond trees blossoming and the green shoots emerging from their branches. The trees, especially the fruit trees, have gone crazy, but so have the insects. Welcome to “tropical” Ibiza, where the “thermal anomaly” has multiplied the life cycles of the six-legged bugs, such as cockroaches (which are also acquiring tropical sizes).

“A very large abundance of flies has been detected throughout the island, which is caused by the dramatic climatic and thermal anomaly that is occurring.”

decoration

“A very large abundance of flies has been detected across the whole island caused by the dramatic climatic and thermal anomaly taking place on the island,” explains Jaume Estarellas, Environment technician from the Consell de Ibiza. It has been, he says, a “very strange year”. Since spring, “when there was little sunshine, with very cloudy days and a lot of fog, and it rained a lot”. There was little sunshine, which caused “insect reproduction to slow down” until almost the end of May: “But suddenly there was a very big explosion…. which was stopped in its tracks by the strong summer heat”. That stop was the entry into the “resistance phase” of the insects, which are able to live in extreme environmental conditions by adopting such strategies: “If they are unfavorable, the adults make a safety lay and die. Many of these eggs are resilient in very adverse conditions. And when they are good again, they all come out at once. They work at peaks. When the weather is good, they explode. When it’s bad, they disappear.

“Everything stopped” in the past summer season, when Ibiza looked like the African savannah. But at the end of that season “there were two peaks, both very hot and with a lot of rain. The second is the current one: now temperatures are very high for these dates and, in addition, there is a lot of humidity. This is what has caused a brutal explosion of flies. And as for other insects, watch out”. Between September and the beginning of October, which were “very rainy”, the island received “an average of 200 to 300 liters”. The rain “is normal”, but instead of the temperatures going down, they went up: “It is as if we were living in the tropics”.

Hence the current abundance of the tiger mosquitos  and houseflies, whose larvae “develop in humid environments, not in water. For example, in organic debris or vegetation. They lay their eggs there, from which the larvae hatch first and then the flies. Since the cold has not arrived and the heat is combined with humidity, these cycles have multiplied: “There have been eight generations (from egg to adult), when at this time of year there are normally less than half”.